Claire Williams: into the Piranha Club

Claire Williams has the pressure of a legendary father's achievements, and is taking the helm of the family F1 team when it's at a low ebb. None of that fazes her, as Dieter Rencken found out

Seldom is a team-principal role in Formula 1 handed down to the following generation; even rarer is it for the position to be awarded to a woman. In fact, only once in Formula 1's 63-year history has the latter been the case, and then only late last year, when Monisha Kaltenborn was appointed to the top job at Sauber.

So it was with not a little surprise that the paddock greeted the news at the start of this season that Claire Williams had been appointed deputy team principal of the eponymous team founded by father Frank as Williams Grand Prix Engineering a year after her birth in 1976.